Text:

After ta peteina ‘the birds’ Textus Receptus adds tou ouranou ‘of the heaven’: all modern editions of the Greek text omit this addition.

Exegesis:

kai egeneto ‘and it was’ plus the indicative epesen ‘it fell’: for this Semitic construction see 1.9; 2.23.

en tō speirein (cf. 6.48 for identical construction) ‘in the sowing,’ ‘as he sowed’: a Semitic construction (Taylor, 62), but found also in Greek.

ho men epesen ‘some (seed) fell’: throughout the whole parable (vv. 5, 7, 8) sperma ‘seed’ is to be understood.

ho (‘some’) is the neuter of the relative hos ‘who,’ ‘which’: it is here used as a demonstrative ‘this (seed),’ ‘this portion (of the seed).’ In connection with allo (v. 5) alla (v. 7) and alla (v. 8) the whole series may be translated: ‘some … and other … and other … and others.’ Notice that ho ‘some’ and auto ‘it’ are collective, meaning ‘some seed’ (not singular, ‘a seed’).

piptō (4.5, 7, 8; 5.22; 9.20; 13.25; 14.35) ‘fall.’

para tēn hodon literally ‘by (alongside) the path’: some see in the Greek phrase a mistranslation of the underlying Aramaic, since the meaning, clearly, is ‘on’ the beaten path that ran through the field, on which the sower walked as he scattered his seed (cf. Lk. 8.5 ‘and it was trodden upon’). “Along” (Revised Standard Version) is ambiguous enough; some (Manson, Moffatt, Berkeley) have “on.”

ta peteina (4.32) ‘the birds.’

katephagen (12.40) ‘they ate,’ ‘they ate up,’ ‘they devoured.’

Translation:

Probably ‘on the path’ is a more justified translation, if one cannot use an ambiguous expression for the Greek phrase (see above).

The birds (as indicated in the added phrase of heaven) refer to the undomesticated song birds or wild birds, to be distinguished in a number of languages from domesticated fowl. In Tzeltal these former are the ‘field birds.’

Many languages distinguish carefully the way in which a bird eats from the manner in which people or animals eat. One must make certain to employ the right term.

Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on the Gospel of Mark. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1961. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .